Help Prevent Political Interference with Curriculum Standards

August 24, 2010

The Center for Inquiry needs your help supporting a House Resolution to
end political meddling with public school curriculum standards.

Earlier this year, Texas’ Christian fundamentalist-dominated State Board
of Education mandated a bizarrely warped US history curriculum for
Texas school children. Because of Texas’ enormous influence on the
nation’s textbook market, the Board’s actions affect non-Texan students
as well. In March the board included a plank directing students to
learn about “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s,
including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract With America, the Heritage
Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”
Because they didn’t care much for Thomas Jefferson, who coined the term
“wall of separation between church and state,”
they erased him from the history books, only to be replaced by lessons on the Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas.

As if scrubbing Jefferson’s name from history were not enough, the board
adopted measures in May requiring students to “examine the reasons the
Founding Fathers protected religious freedom in America and guaranteed
its free exercise by saying that Congress shall make no law respecting
an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,
and compare and contrast this to the phrase ‘separation of church and
state.’” This reflects conservative evangelicals’ false contention that
the doctrine of separation of church and state was fabricated by judges
and was not part of the original intent of the Constitution’s drafters.

Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson from Texas has introduced H. Res
1593, which “supports standards that guide curriculum development,
instruction, and assessment in classrooms that are developed by experts
and not subject to political biases.” Please contact your U.S.
Representative today to urge him or her to cosponsor this important
resolution.

Visit this link
to send an e-mail to your U.S. Representative. You may modify the
letter with your own words if you wish, but please send your letter as
soon as possible.